The most wickedly vibrant genre film to emerge out of England in years, Kill List is a tour de excessive force that deftly blends Wicker Man-style occult freakiness with pulse-pounding gangland realism. Leading a cast full of breakout performances, Neil Maskell plays an increasingly bombastic and completely terrifying contract killer who comes out of an early retirement at the promise of a big payoff — handed to him by an organization more ominous than any such group of characters ever seen in the pantheon of gangster movies. Throughout this constantly morphing cinematic melange, director Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace) injects scalding fresh blood by diving into a dizzyingly unpredictable succession of genres, from nuanced marriage drama to heat attack-inducing horror, all seamlessly stitched together with the visual and sonic flair of a true auteur. Whether you worship at the altar of art house or the church of the midnight mass, Kill List will make you a convert.
Dir. Ben Wheatley, 2011, 35mm, 95 min.